articles/Nature/ashtonsgambia-page4

Ashton's Gambia - part 4 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

by Jonathan Ashton Published 01/02/2011

The camera batteries lasted very well indeed, never falling to less than 25% capacity - this surprised me considering much was done with the 500f4 L. I always carried spares, but in reality I didn't need them, I always charged the batteries fully each evening after 'chimping' my images in-camera. I took about 120GB of memory cards with me, I decided not to buy a portable hard drive nor to take a lap top, (CompactFlash cards have always served me well to date). After each day I reviewed the images taken in the camera and deleted any obviously poorly focused or badly exposed images. I think I came home with about 90GB of saved images. Above is a table to indicate the usage of the equipment used.

So no surprises there: the 500mm was used most frequently followed by the 100-400mm zoom. I was a little surprised at first at just how much I used the 17-40mm but I soon recalled that many were grab shots taken from the back of the jeep we travelled in. Time was of the essence so we spent as much time as possible photographing wild life and as little as possible travelling in the vehicle or on foot. I used the 50D a little more that I first anticipated, this was because the 7D gave me some problems; firstly it refused to focus on an intermittent basis - resulting in some frustration and expletives, it also refused point blank to engage the image stabiliser on any stabilised lens.

Upon return this was quickly fixed, under guarantee, by Lehmanns in Stoke upon Trent - I delivered the camera to Lehmanns at 10.15 am on 23 December 2010 and it was delivered back to me at 11.00 am on 24 December 2010 - they replaced the contacts in the camera body. I didn't use the extenders much but, having said that, I got a few important images with the 1.4 x coupled to the 180mm macro lens.

• Ashton's Gambia page 1
  
• Ashton's Gambia page 2
  
• Ashton's Gambia page 3
  
• Ashton's Gambia page 4
  
• Ashton's Gambia page 5
  
• Ashton's Gambia page 6
  
• Ashton's Gambia page 7
  

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